The Root of the Root

Here is where it happens
here is where the action is
This locus I carry around all day
inside my own soul.

It's a carnival in here, only
none of the performers are trained and
most of them are of questionable origin;
certainly other carnivals wouldn't take the rest
even for a sideshow.

I don't mind.
I put the winged Bengal tiger in a tutu
and the lobster boy seems content
cracking tough cases for the FBI.

Our dragon is rather small, and when I discovered
she doesn't breathe fire
and has no interest in destroying small villages
I set her to work de-bugging the lake;
she does enjoy mosquitoes and flies.

There's a pygmy mammoth in our jungle but no elephants,
as they are out roaming the remnants of the last
wild lands they can find on the ravaged planet
and connecting them to one another with their
regal rumbling matriarchal tread.

There's a fat lady and a thin lady who argue a lot;
we have a two-headed fortune-teller who is 50% right.
We have a nocturnal desert manticore, and a liger who will not
under any circumstances, wear a tutu
but does favor scarves and poetry.

Strange as it sounds, we don't take just anyone;
all beings must apply.  For instance
Cthulhu was denied after he ate the HR unicorn
(she was the Centaur's sweetheart;
need I mention the gory aftermath?)
We don't take vampires or zombies--too trendy.
Chupacabras need not apply, nor hellhounds
nor strongmen, ringmasters or lion tamers.

Goddesses are always welcome; Isis calls this home
and Osiris resides here with her in safety, although
the fat lady has been known to make a pass at him.
The poet Rumi visits with frequency, for there is nothing
he loves more than absurdity
and when he comes he has tea with Isis.
Of course we take mermaids and sirens
and the ocean is filled with monsters, whales and
that ever-intriguing creature, the relict coelacanth.

But the last, most recondite yet simplest being
is a cosmic mystery with many names
and only one meaning.
Of all the denizens that call my portable locus home
this one alone lives in the simple space at its very center.

It is a single point of light
always moving yet always fixed
dancing the dance it began before the beginning.
From it sprang all the creatures
in all their incomparability, here
for the sheer joy of being--
here because Love made it so.

I carry this carnival around inside
and on the bad days and the mad days
that point of light, that single point of Love
does its warming work at my center
and if I listen
(sshhhh--)
there is Isis, bearer of unimaginable pain
whispering encouragement; and there is Rumi
with that ever-present reminder:

"Come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul."




KB © 3/10/2013